Leading with/in emotion states: The criticality of political subjects and policy debates in educational leadership on emotions

Abstract

One of the many facets of educational leadership is the emotional aspects of educational leadership itself. Leaders are regularly immersed in emotionally charged broad-based policy debates and political subjects like protests and voting policies. These are policy subjects that politically occur not only in schools where educational leaders practice but also in their interactions with school boards, media, and community members. Such interactions are stressful and contribute to leadership burnout, especially among critical educational leaders. As such, educational leadership needs to address not only the emotionality of their practice but the emotions that result from the interactions they regularly encounter in their practice about societal political subjects and policy debates. Simply, emotions are the reason educators politically advocate for policy subjects in the first place—it’s because of how they “feel” about racial segregation or that they are “pissed” about police brutality. Using textual analysis, this article contends that the scholarship within educational leadership lacks attentiveness to addressing how emotions interact with the societal political subjects that permeate leadership, therefore stifling innovative practices for addressing “controversial” policy debates and political subjects that are, ipso facto, inherently emotional. This view of emotions in educational leadership has the power to change how the field conceptualizes politics and policy subjects. Accordingly, educational leadership that focuses on emotional interactions with political subjects is apt to advance the field of educational politics and policy.